Window Cleaning in Fort Worth
Fort Worth water runs 7 to 10 grains hard, and the city caps sprinklers at two days a week, year round. Two days a week is still every week. The water dries off the glass, the calcium stays, and the bottom foot of your first-floor windows goes white. We take that off, wash the screens, clear the tracks, and get the daylight back into the room.
How we do it
Every window starts dry. Webs and mud dauber tubes come off the frames. Pollen and grit get brushed off the head and out of the bottom track before any water touches the pane. Grit is abrasive. Dragging it across wet glass is how windows get scratched.
Reachable glass gets washed by hand. Soapy water laid on with a strip washer, pulled off with a sharp brass channel squeegee, edges detailed with a lint-free scrim towel. The rubber blade gets flipped or swapped the second it nicks, because one nick puts a line on every pull after it.
Upstairs glass gets worked from the ground with a pole where the run allows it, rather than a ladder leaned against your gutter. Pole work uses purified water, stripped of dissolved minerals, which is the whole point: Fort Worth water is hard enough that ordinary tap water dries to a spotted mess on glass. With nothing left in the water there's nothing to dry onto the pane.
Scraping happens only on wet glass, with a fresh blade held flat. Coated glass gets no blade at all. Tempered glass gets a test scrape in a corner first, because debris fused into the surface back at the tempering furnace will drag under a blade and score the pane.
Hard water scale gets an acidic descaler and a white pad first. What that won't lift takes a cerium oxide polish, and that gets quoted on its own. Screens come off, get washed flat, and go back dry. They never see a pressure washer, which blows mesh straight out of the spline.
The visit, step by step
- 1
Walk the elevations first
We start on the sprinkler side and find where the heads are actually hitting glass. Anything already etched gets flagged and photographed before a thing is touched. On tempered panes we test a corner for fabricating debris before any blade goes near them.
- 2
Knock down and de-grit
Webs, mud dauber tubes, and wasp starts come off the frames and eaves. Pollen and grit get brushed off the head, the frame, and the bottom track. Grit is abrasive, and washing over it is how glass picks up fine scratches.
- 3
Screens out, washed flat, dried
Every screen is pulled and labeled by its opening, since they're cut to the frame and don't swap. They get brushed both sides with soap, rinsed, and stood to dry before reinstall, so water isn't sitting inside an aluminum frame.
- 4
Wash the glass
Ground floor by hand with a strip washer and a sharp squeegee, fanned and detailed at the edges. Upstairs from the ground with the pure water pole, rinsed top down and left to dry. Scale gets descaled, and if it's bonded on we quote the cerium oxide polish separately.
- 5
Tracks, weep holes, final look
Grit vacuumed out of the bottom track, then the weep holes cleared with a soft brush and low-pressure air. No metal picks, which crack the frame. Then we check the glass from inside at a low angle, which is the only place streaks actually show up.
Why it matters here
Hard water on glass isn't just a look. The deposit is porous and it holds moisture against the pane. That trapped water pulls sodium out of the glass, what's left turns alkaline, and alkaline is what breaks down the silica in the surface itself.
Early on the mineral is still sitting on top and a descaler takes it off. Left through a few seasons of April to October irrigation, it bonds, and the haze stops answering to anything but a polish. Past that the glass is etched. Light etching sometimes polishes out. Deep etching doesn't, and the pane gets replaced. South and west elevations go first here, because the same sun that chalks your siding bakes the mineral film on hard.
Screens fail for a different reason, and it's the sun, not the water. UV eats the vinyl coating off the mesh, then the glass fiber underneath goes brittle and snaps when you touch it. Ten to fifteen years is the usual run, less on a south or west wall.
Pollen is the other half of the screen problem. Oak loads the mesh from late February through May, which cuts the light coming into the room. The same grit and pollen silt up the bottom track. That track drains through weep holes. Plug those, and storm water stands in the track and comes over the inside lip instead of running out the face of the frame.
Signs it's time
- ✦A white or cloudy band across the bottom foot of your first-floor glass, worst on the windows your sprinkler heads reach
- ✦Glass that still looks hazy after you've cleaned it yourself, usually the south and west facing panes
- ✦Screens gone grey and the room behind them dim, with yellow-green pollen on your hand when you touch the mesh
- ✦Mesh that feels stiff or snaps at a corner when you press it, which is the vinyl coating burned off by the sun
- ✦Water standing in the bottom track after a storm instead of draining out the face of the frame
- ✦Mud dauber tubes on the frames and webs packed into the upper corners
What it costs
A one-time window cleaning runs $200 to $400, depending on pane count, how many stories, and how much hard water scale is on the glass. Most homes price near $250. On The Homestead Plan you get two window passes a year, included in your monthly price of $149 to $449 by home size. February is one, after cedar peaks in January and ahead of the oak. September is the other, once the heaviest sprinkler months are behind you.
Questions
The bottom of my windows has a white haze that won't wipe off. Can you fix it?
There are three versions of it and they don't all end the same way. If the mineral is still sitting on the surface, an acidic descaler takes it off. If it's bonded on, it takes a cerium oxide polish worked in with a felt pad, which is real time and gets quoted on top of the wash. If the calcium has already eaten into the glass, that's etching. Light etching sometimes polishes out. Deep etching doesn't, and the pane gets replaced. We test a corner and tell you which one you've got before we start, not after. Worth knowing: that band is calcium, not rust. Fort Worth runs treated surface water off the lakes, hard but low in iron, so what lands on your glass is white scale. Orange staining is a well water problem. Either way, get that sprinkler head turned so it stops hitting the glass, or it comes back.
How do you reach the second story? I don't want a ladder against my gutter.
Most upstairs glass gets washed from the ground with a carbon fiber water-fed pole, which reaches about three stories. The water is filtered through reverse osmosis and DI resin down to nearly zero dissolved solids, so it rinses clean and dries with nothing left on the glass. The whole point of the pole is that nothing rests on your aluminum gutter, nothing stands in your beds, and nobody walks a wet roof slope to get at a dormer. Where the pole can't get an angle, we say so before we start, and the ladder gets footed on the ground rather than leaned on the gutter.
Do you clean the inside of the glass too?
No. The plan visits and the one-time price on this page cover exterior glass, screens, sills, and tracks. Interior is a different job, with furniture moved, floors covered, and blinds down, so it gets priced per home. Put it in the notes on the quote form and we'll price it with the rest.
What happens to my screens, and what if one's already torn?
They come off, get labeled by opening so each one goes back in the frame it was cut for, and get brushed and rinsed lying flat. Fiberglass mesh has a life. UV eats the vinyl coating, the glass fiber under it goes brittle, and ten to fifteen years is the usual run in this sun. A south or west wall is shorter. Hail season doesn't help either. If a screen is torn or the frame is bent, we photograph it and leave it out rather than force it back and split it further. We don't rescreen.